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| Tuesday, 25 May 2004 |
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Editorial | |
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| Please forward your comments to the Editor, Daily News. Email : [email protected] Snail mail : Daily News, 35, D.R. Wijewardene Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429429 / 94 11 2421181 Fax : 94 11 2429210 Education: Clearing roadblocks The decision taken by the Government to expand and strengthen its programme of providing wholesome morning meals to Grade One students in underdeveloped and rural sector schools is to be commended. As stated by Media Minister Reginald Cooray announcing the programme at the Weekly Cabinet briefing, "free education will be meaningless to a hungry student". No doubt foremost in the mind of the Government would have been a report that over 28 per cent of students aged between five and nine are malnourished. This is a sad indictment on the planners of our state policy given that Sri Lanka at one time was held as an example as the ideal welfare state. While all Governments since independence should take responsibility for the decline, a sizable share of the blame should be laid at the doorstep of past UNP regimes which did away with many welfare measures which existed as a life belt to the impoverished masses. It is a former UNP regime which withdrew the rice subsidy while also pruning other welfare measures which the public had upto then taken for granted. Even a subject of such magnitude as education was not spared the scalpel of the UNP regime during the last two years with millions of dollars of foreign funding earmarked for university education either frozen or unutilized, placing roadblocks towards educational development. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga lost no time in taking remedial measures knowing full well that education was the backbone of development and growth. Hardly a fortnight after the new Freedom Alliance Government took office, the President as Minister of Education summoned an urgent meeting of educational authorities directing them to take immediate steps to implement certain educational reform projects. After observing that the World Bank funding received for these projects had been frozen or under-utilised, she called for the funds to be re-diverted to revive the stalled projects aimed at improving the quality of education. Backed by Deputy Ministers Mangala Samaraweera and Dinesh Gunawardena and the energetic Secretary Dr. Tara De Mel, President Kumaratunga has already spelled out her vision for educational development holding that it was the responsibility of the state to provide all resources to develop this sector. She has discussed priority areas in higher education such as providing employment generating courses, English language courses, ICT facilities and student welfare measures. Professionals involved in education have commended her for initiating a series of positive steps, including re-introducing the distribution of school uniforms through schools, revising the school curricula by adding literature and history as subjects, granting employment to 27,000 graduate teachers within the next two months and increasing university bursaries up to Rs.2,000. She is determined to reverse the trend set in by the previous UNP regime which displayed a lackadaisical and laid back approach towards such a vital sector such as education, which did not care a tuppence for the villagers but was concerned with only the welfare of minuscule city bred elitist cliques for which it paid dearly at the hustings. Leaning on the truism of a healthy mind in a healthy body, the present Administration is bent on providing sustenance to the malnourished rural child to improve his stock and providing him with the necessary resources to continue with his education unhampered by the pangs of hunger. The project in 3000 schools which will cost the Government Rs. 360 million a year (Rs.15 per meal) will be implemented step by step starting from 600 schools next year, according to Minister Cooray. With these measures and many more in the pipeline in all spheres of Government to promote the welfare of the poor and the oppressed, the country has a caring adminstration under the leadership of the President. |
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